Studio Developer provides numerous new features to make CA Gen easier to use and more productive. The key new features are described in this document: Studio Developer Key New Features and highlights are described below. You can also follow the IET Gen Development Blog for a series of postings on the key new features.

Model Explorer

You can edit multiple objects simultaneously in independent editors.

You can quickly access objects by ‘pinning’ them or by having them automatically added to the Recently Used list.

The model-wide Search and Replace tool allows you to search the model for text strings in literals, notes and descriptions.

Action Diagram Features

Action diagram statements can be edited using a combination of keyboard entry and mouse selection.

Code suggestion / auto-complete features assist in selecting options and reduce the number of key strokes required.

You can undo/redo statement editing back to the last save of the action diagram.

The diagram supports partially complete or invalid statements, which provides greater flexibility when editing statements since the diagram only has to be consistent when you want to save changes to the local model.

You can copy selected statements and paste back into the same action diagram or a different action diagram in the same or another model.

You can paste with view substitution, which enables you to choose different views or create new views.

NOTE statement with the keyword “TODO” indicate their presence with blue marker in the locator bar.

Statement numbers are displayed alongside the statements.

You can enable colouring of block lines with an action diagram preference. This makes it easier to locate the line for a specific statement when placing the end marker for an ESCAPE or NEXT pointer.

Code snippets can be saved in a file and then inserted into a different action diagram in the same or a different model.

View Preferences allow you to specify view keywords for the various view sections. When matching or copying views, the keywords are used to format the copied view names. For example, when copying an import view named IN_HIDDEN to an export view, the view name would be pre-defined as OUT_HIDDEN.

UI Designer

You can undo/redo editing of the UI design back to the last save to the local model.

You can use the keyboard to precisely position controls. Co-ordinates can also be entered in the property sheet.

The size of the window / dialog box being designed is not limited to the size of the developer’s monitor.

Controls can be added to the UI design before the views are created providing a more flexible approach to designing a new dialog.

You can specify default height and width for push buttons and default height for fields in the Model Preferences so that newly created push buttons and fields have a standard size.

You can save standard controls (for example OK & cancel buttons) to a snippet file and insert them into a different window / dialog from a library of UI snippets.

You can preview windows and dialogs as a desktop or web page.

Data Structure Design

The new Data Structure Editor combines the data store and data structure details into a single place to view and edit the database design.

The new Synchronise Data Structure tool is available to synchronise the data structure with the data model.

If you modify the identifier of an entity type, you can synchronise the table’s identifying index and associated foreign keys without needing to re-transform the entity type, thus retaining any customisations made to the table and its associated components.

The functions of the legacy DB2 Partitioning plugin have been incorporated into the tablespace and table editors so a separate plugin is no longer required to define these properties.

Code Generation

If the generation editor is open when you save a change to an action diagram, window design or screen design, the object changed is automatically flagged for generation and the load module(s) containing it for installation.

You can drag and drop procedure steps and action diagrams from the Model Explorer as an easy method of selecting objects for generation.

You can flag action blocks that use an action block for generation (for example when import/export views change) using the Generate Used By function.

You can specify separate generation options for the different types of load modules (online, batch, client, server and window).

Filters are available to control which operations libraries are built which is especially useful if you have some libraries that are used for clients and others for servers.